Amazing Washington - Back From the Forest

June 3

Got up before I wanted to and got organized.  I had time to shower, exercise, and eat a granola bar, then we got everything together and took off at a little after 6AM.  We had to leave some of our food there, no way to take it on the plane and no room in our bags.  They had told me at the car rental place to allow two hours between returning the car and our flight time.  And we figured during morning rush hour it might take two hours to get to the car rental place.  So we were on schedule.

Started off West on route 706 through beautiful downtown Ashford and then the town of Elbe, where they have a motel with rooms in old train cars.  Then right on route 7 past lovely Alder Lake, and right again on the Alder Cutoff Road, which turned into route 161 in Eatonville.  As we drove North we got glimpses of the bulk of Mt. Rainier off to the right.

We finished the last of the PB&J sandwiches as the trees began to thin and the buildings began to proliferate.  161 joined route 512 and by then we were already in suburbia and crawling in a dueling group of cars from one traffic light to the next.  In Puyallup, 512 became route 167, which is a limited access highway, and the traffic really started.  We jumped into the HOV lane but pretty soon they had dire signs that yes, it was an HOV lane, BUT you had to have the right transponder for it or they’d charge you $15 to use it!  So we crawled along with the rest.

After a while, Google maps started telling us that it would be faster to take local roads, and so we let it guide us left and right and left and right and left and right, etc. on city streets and twisty parkways through residential and factory and high tech neighborhoods through the suburbs South of Seattle.  It was another great day with no clouds and this tactic seemed to be working.  We weren’t stuck in a line of traffic at least.  And we ended up at the car rental area a little ahead of schedule.

No problem dropping off the car, they had the receipt for me in 30 seconds.  We put about 800 miles on her in six days, not that strenuous but a lot of up and down.  Goodbye to Muddy, who may not have an adventure like that again any time soon!  Got on the shuttle bus to the North terminal and we were back where we started, checking in our shared suitcase at an Alaskan Airlines kiosk.

Getting through security took forever though.  The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, or the North terminal at least, is not scaled to the number of people who go through there.  Even though it was 9AM on a Tuesday, they had to make lines that went back and forth and back and forth through almost the entire terminal.  The line we were in moved relatively quickly though, but when we finally got to the climax, they had to send me back twice to take off my belt and put it in my pack, and then to take off my boots (metal eyelets??) and put them through the scanner.  As Sarah said when I finally caught up in a state of undress, it’s a good thing they didn’t make me take off my pants.

Made it to the gate area and grabbed some of the last seats.  The whole area was just packed with people.  Luckily, they did the same thing they had on our flight West, and announced that people could check bags at the gate for free, since they were afraid the overheads would fill up.  Alaska Airlines 506 left the gate a little early actually, as the plane was full and there was no reason not to.

We had seats together again, right over the wing, this time on the port side of the plane.  As we taxied we caught a last glimpse of Mt. Rainier out the window, and caught our only glimpse of Mt. Olympus right after that.  And when we took off into the Northwest wind and then headed East, we ended up flying over Mt. Baker in North Cascades NP.  We’d ordered a chicken meal for this flight and it was not bad.  I dozed a bit and we again lucked out with the jet stream, getting in to Logan about an hour early.

Back on Eastern time and it was a nice day in Boston too.  Alaska Air got our bags out quickly, and we headed for the cab stand.  Not a bad ride back to Woburn and the kitties were ecstatic to see us, as we were to see them.

So how would I rate this vacation?  I’d have to put it very high on my list as far as seeing many things I’ll remember for a long time: the ocean, the mountains, the waterfalls, the sea stacks, the trees, the ancient forest ecosystem, the glaciers, the wildflowers, etc.  We mostly got where we wanted to when we wanted to, and/or had a Plan B, and our accommodations worked out well.  It’s too bad some of the places we wanted to hike were still snowbound, but if we’d gone later in the year the number of people we’d have to wade through would at least double.  We really should have made the vacation longer, but we knew we were going to miss the kitties.  In all I’d have to call it a short, amazing time!